The University of Michigan Global Course Connections Program, Slavic Department and Residential College have teamed up to provide students with a unique opportunity—to travel to St. Petersburg and northern provincial Russia for 10 days of community service, sightseeing, research projects and personal growth. On this blog, participants will tell about their experiences before, during, and after their spring break trip.

Friday, March 2, 2012

The Ups and Downs of Vytegra

After my first post I am still
feeling great, perhaps even better, to be in Russia with a fantastic group of
Russianists! Since my first post, we
have been to the Alexander Svirsky Monastery, we have worked in the museum,
gone to the schools, conducted interviews, had dance offs with the Vytegor
youth, slid down ice hills, went on a one horse open sleigh, and, without a
doubt, had way to much delicious Russian food and tea (but I am not really complaining).

Our trip from Saint Petersburg to
Vytegra was beautiful, we passed by birch trees, pines, and evergreens coupled
with an abundant snowfall; the Russian “Heartland” is at a level of beauty that
is hard to qualify. We learned in our
course that natural beauty is a strong paradigm of the Russian “Heartland” and it
was evident in on our trip from Petersburg to Vytegra. The monastery was also beautiful; we heard
monks sing. Last year I heard these
monks sing and it was one of the many highlights of the trip. However this year
I believe the singing was even more amazing; the music brought me to tears. And nearly everyone on the trip bought a CD
of the Monks music. I will post some
photos of the monastery from last year( black and white film).

It is hard to follow Denisovich’s
last post; it was extremely eloquent and moving. Being in Vytegra and its surrounding villages
I have noticed many social differences that I did not experience last year. On Tuesday we all went to a Youth club, and
at this club we played many games. There
was one game in which a woman, who lead this club, put two photos up on a
screen, and then asked us Americans, and the Russians, to tell her what the juxtaposition
evoked for us. The woman would then put
another image on the screen to show what images meant together for her. One of the pairs of images was a toothless chimpanzee
and a hand grenade. People in our group
guessed many things, I though perhaps the image to later appear would be
death. I was shocked to see that the
image the woman picked was a woman driving and even more shocked that the
Russians, and many in our group, broke out in laughter. Clearly social justice is not strong in this
town; that is to say I was offended.
Later in the Village of Andoma we sat in a class room with eleventh
grade students, and it seemed as though the teacher was allowing the children
to be gender normative by saying “our boys like sports and are girls don’t”. She believed that the only sport a girl could
do was ice skating, but they do not have a skating rank and thus were not
sporty. Although I did experience some
negative energy while being here, it is not to say that I am not having the
time of my life, it just saddens me to see such backwardness in such a
wonderful place.

In fact I had so much fun at other points
during the youth club. If you are browsing
the blog I really suggest watching Andrew’s video of us dancing. This video just goes to show that, even
though these are provincial Russians from a small town, they are amazing at
just about everything. They can dance,
sing, speaking English well (a lot of them anyway), they are craftsmen, and excel
at many subjects. Schooling here is
outstanding. For people that our
browsing the blog, and not in Vytegra, can look no further than Andrew’s video
if they need an example of how talented Russians are compared to us.

On the other hand, connecting with
the youth this year has been especially rewarding. Denisovich referenced last night’s get together
with the Vyegor youth, and it was really an exciting and special point of the
trip. Before Denisovich asked those two
girls to talk about homosexuals in Vytegra, the approached me first and asked “is
it normal in your town to be gay?” And of course I answered yes. I was eager to tell this to Denisovich
because he, as he said, wanted to plant a positive seed about this topic. I met some local little monsters (Gaga fans);
this was a fantastic experience for me.
These monsters knew little English and so we talked about Gaga at length
in Russian. They also knew a lot about
Russian Fairy tales, which was not only interesting context for my research
project, but also another great way to connect and use Russian. I was really glad to make some friends and
practice Russian.

In Vytegra I am researching the legendy and skazki native to Vytegra about Peter the Great. With this information I hope to find the
ethnographic importance of Peter the Great in Vytegra, from the past to the present. I have got many historical documents to work
with from the museum, and a few tales as well.
Some of these documents are difficult to translate because they were
written in the 19th century Russian, and consequently use words such
as “hath”. Nonetheless they are very useful
documents. I also received more information
from Elena, deputy mayor, about Peter the Great’s travels to Vytegra. Yesterday I interviewed a woman that works at
the museum, and gave us a tour of the Klyuev museum, about Peter the Great’s
influence in Vytegra. She was extremely knowledgeable
about the legendy of Peter the great,
and I was lucky enough to learn more legendy
about Peter from her.